


noticing

by winchysteria



Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blind Date, Canon Trans Character, M/M, Meet-Cute, but not like all the way grown up you know like maybe in their early 20s, they're grownups
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 15:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18552856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchysteria/pseuds/winchysteria
Summary: "I'm supposed to meet someone across the street," he confesses, if only because it feels like the World's Handsomest Man will look at him longer if he tells the truth. "A date. My friends set it up.""And you don't want to go?" WHM asks, expression retreating slightly. "You don't like this person?""No, it's not that," Matteo says. "I don't know him, but he sounds-- perfect, you know? And I don't know if he would like me very much."WHM looks at him, considering, and Matteo glances back at the shelves, embarrassed that he overshared. WHM takes his time responding; Matteo half-expects him to just walk away."Well, it's fortunate for you," WHM says, "that I am in exactly the same situation."





	noticing

**Author's Note:**

> i'd like to thank the gays only druck server for my life. also i don't know how germany works so i'm sorry abt whatever horrific inaccuracies there are about like everything

Matteo should be in the café across the street. It is entirely his fault that he isn't. He got here on time, he's dressed in his second-best button-down and his best-best jeans, his hair is-- well, it's doing something. His date, based upon the glowing descriptions Matteo has been getting from his friends all week, is probably already there. And he's probably looking ten times as good.

Not that Matteo would know.

* * *

 

"Why won't you just show me a picture of him?" he'd asked repeatedly over the past week. "What, is he someone I hated from school? Someone who was on the news for murdering people?"

They'd told him pretty much every other detail he could ever have wanted to know about this guy-- he works in film, he draws, he's Hanna's coworker's little brother, he really likes Travis Scott and Motown music, he has a thing about vampires, he's smart and athletic and funny and kind-- but nobody would show Matteo a picture of this guy who was supposedly the love of his life. Or give him a last name, for that matter.

The explanation varied depending on who he asked. "I don't want you to stalk him on Instagram and overthink it before the date even starts," Jonas had said kindly. Which was kind of fair. Anxiety was like that sometimes. But still, it was like they wanted Matteo to get serial-killed.

"It's because we know you'd see him from a distance and run away because you're afraid of intimacy," Kiki had said. That was also fair. He didn't have to like it, though.

Carlos was the most straightforward. "Honestly, man? He's too fucking good-looking," he'd said. "Like, the most beautiful man alive. If I showed you a picture you'd freak out and refuse to go on the date."

So that was all they let him have. The scattered facts about his job and his hobbies. The fact that he's handsome. And his first name-- David.

* * *

 

Despite his friends' best intentions, there is very little anyone can do to stop Matteo from freaking out and overthinking.

He doesn't know what his game plan is here. He'd just gotten off the bus at the right stop, strolled up to the café, and then kept walking. The little shop across the street-- half bookshelves, half record cases, scattered pieces of art throughout-- had seemed unthreatening and inviting enough, and the "Thriller/Horror" section had a perfect view of the place where he was actively standing up his date. He kind of intends to just watch from a short distance, maybe do some surveillance on his date so he can either work up his courage properly or arbitrarily find something wrong with him and bolt. It can't be that hard to figure out which one was David, right? There'd only be so many ridiculously handsome men showing up alone, looking around for a person who wasn't there, looking disappointed, waiting around until they knew for sure that their deeply average date had bailed, scoffing and walking away--

Matteo feels like he might throw up.

He backs away from the front window of the shop just a little bit, unable to look away just yet.

And then, because of  _course,_ there's a second body in this aisle that's been totally empty for the past fifteen minutes. Matteo bumps into them full-force, shoulder-to-chest, and hears a handful of books tumble to the ground.

 _Fuck fuck fuck,_ he thinks, feeling the panic rise just a little faster in his throat, but then the other person starts to talk.

"Shit, I'm sorry," they say in a shockingly nice voice. An expensive-coffee voice, sort of. "I wasn't looking where I was going."

"No, no, it's my fault," Matteo starts as he turns to face the very nice voice.

He thinks, immediately, that Carlos is a filthy goddamn liar. Carlos and People magazine and everybody else in the world, because this, clearly, is the best-looking man in the world. He has a broad, graceful jawline dusted with five o'clock shadow, and his pursed-bow lips seem only briefly at rest, as if their natural shape is a smile. But the most miraculous part of his face, by far, is his eyes-- dark brown, fringed with a ragged silk edge of eyelashes, and somehow liquid, alive with movement and intent. Matteo could go on, but that's it, mainly: he looks more alive than anyone else Matteo has ever seen.

Of course, he can think of fuck all to say.

Instead, he kneels awkwardly and picks up the books-- a couple of those squat, thick, brick-shaped beach novels. He doesn't recognize any of their names; they're all in English, with black covers and spiky lettering. "Uh, here," he says, handing them back to the World's Handsomest Man, who runs his hands through his thick, directionless dark hair before he takes them back. Matteo notices that he has a silver hoop in his septum, which makes him want to grow wings and fly into the sun.

"To be honest, I wasn't actually going to buy any of these," WHM admits. "I was just kind of poking around."

Matteo nods, shrugs. "Yeah, it's a nice place."

They stand in silence for a moment, testing the limits of how long two strangers can just look at each other before it gets weird.

"So, are you shopping as well?" WHM asks.

Matteo looks between the shelf directly in front of him, which is full of what look like dirty detective novels, and WHM's expression, which holds just an edge of challenge that Matteo finds himself desperately hoping to live up to. "Eh, nah," he says. "I'm just-- procrastinating something else."

WHM looks pleased, like sunlight, and something inside Matteo curls up happily in the warmth. "Yeah? And what's that?"

He used to feel watched, sometimes. In the bad, paranoid way. His first therapist used to tell him to imagine every person that he paid attention to in a day-- out of the dozens or hundreds he passed on the street or wherever, he actively thought about only a handful. He saw the others, but he didn't notice them. At the time, he had said "Well, I notice when they look like shit," or something equally unhelpful. Later, he accepted the point. People almost always feel passively benevolent toward each other. Seeing, but not noticing.

WHM is noticing him: eyes amused, corners of his lips turned up. He has this direct, confident posture about it, too, like he's waiting for Matteo to point it out. But it's a safe, welcome noticing, warm on his cheeks and shoulders. It catches something in Matteo's stomach on fire.

"I'm supposed to meet someone across the street," he confesses, if only because it feels like WHM will look at him longer if he tells the truth. "A date. My friends set it up."

"And you don't want to go?" WHM asks, expression retreating slightly. "You don't like this person?"

"No, it's not that," Matteo says. "I don't know him, but he sounds-- perfect, you know? And I don't know if  _he_ would like _me_ very much."

WHM looks at him, considering, and Matteo glances back at the shelves, embarrassed that he overshared. WHM takes his time responding; Matteo half-expects him to just walk away.

"Well, it's fortunate for you," WHM says, "that I am in exactly the same situation."

Matteo smiles, quick and unself-conscious. "Oh, you're also bailing on a blind date with somebody out of your league?"

WHM nods confidently, but he shoves his hands in the pockets of his black wool coat in a distinctly shy way. "Yeah, for weeks, you know, my friends have been talking this guy up, like he's some genius cover model who makes homemade pasta for fun. I'm way too nervous to meet that guy, but I'll never hear the end of it if I don't."

"I think your friends and my friends would get along," Matteo says, which makes WHM laugh.

And he is absolutely fucked, because he knows immediately that he'd drain his bank account, quit his job, and fake his own death to hear that laugh again.

"Well, maybe the two perfect people will find each other anyway, and they can go on their date without us," WHM says. "Happy endings all around."

"What am I supposed to do with my evening, then?" Matteo asks. Everything in his ribcage is light and floaty, and one piece of WHM's incredible hair is starting to escape from its styled swoop and fall over his left temple.

WHM pretends to think for a second. "Obviously, you let me buy you a drink somewhere else," he says, flashing a smile that says it really is obvious.

Matteo smiles back. "The least-perfect drink you can find."

"As not-perfect as possible."

They waste another few seconds just-- looking, you know. Except this time, the stranger-feeling has passed. Matteo can't quite tell what has taken its place. 

WHM looks uncharacteristically nervous as he holds a hand out. "David," he says, a little gravel in his voice.

Matteo smiles and shakes it. "Yeah, I know."

* * *

 

They wander for hours, stopping thirty minutes here for a drink and thirty minutes there for a kebab, as barely-dusk changes to true night and then almost-morning. Matteo feels teenaged again, clumsy with possibilities. David is easier to talk to than anyone he knows, barring Jonas, and Jonas has a twenty-year head start. He holds himself with natural grace, unshakably balanced, but Matteo decides that he's also quite close. Possible to reach out and touch.

"It's like with-- with forests, right. They burn down, but they grow back, the same place but different. Cities do it too. Everyone outside Detroit gave up on it and went to look for something better, you know? But now, everyone whose parents and grandparents didn't move away, they're building Detroit again right where it was before, restaurants and art and architecture. Like, helping each other up." David crumples up his last napkin and leans on the guardrail, looking across the Spree to the darkened storefronts on the opposite side.

"Ah, he makes films and writes poetry," Matteo says, because he thinks it'll make David blush.

He's right. It feels like winning the lottery.

"Shut up," David says, and the words aren't sincere but Matteo thinks the fondness might be. It's so, so easy to look at David, his strong nose in profile against the street lights, hair windswept in an organized, passionate way. When David looks back, it's harder to breathe, and still Matteo's nerves aren't jumpy or chaotic. Just lit up, like wires in a circuit that's finally grounded.

"You broke your promise," Matteo says.

"How's that?" David replies, and the playfulness in his voice is mismatched to the gravity in his gaze.

Matteo shrugs. "This has all been perfect."

The wind sweeping past them isn't fierce or bitter, but Matteo still shivers a little when David smiles at him like that. "Not quite," David says, with a barely-there tilt of the head.

"Yeah?" Matteo replies. "What's missing?"

But he already knows. He pulls David in by the waist.

The thing he feels when they lock eyes has a name, Matteo realizes. They are not two strangers staring anymore, but two people at the very beginning of falling in love with each other.

 

David's lips are warm and yielding, and he holds Matteo the same way he talks to him: insistent, confident, but gentle. He braces himself with one hand on Matteo's shoulder and the other on the back of his neck, pressing softly into Matteo's hair. He is happy enough to scream, buoyed up by a joyful silvery something inside his chest, but he contents himself instead with David's very-much-perfect closeness and the way he melts into each kiss just a little more than the one before.

* * *

"You are such an asshole," Hanna's voice crackles from the speakers of Matteo's phone. It's late morning, at least, but he hadn't really checked the time before he picked up the call. He's leaning against his headboard, knees up, as he lets his friends ream him.

"Yeah, man," adds a distant Carlos. "We found you the perfect man--"

"The perfect man--" (and that has to be Kiki), "like genuinely the best person I have ever met--"

"And you flaked!" Hanna bursts. "You ditched our sweet handsome David to go smoke and think about how lonely you are, or whatever!"

"I love you, brother, but you definitely fucked up," Jonas says. "Now he's saying that he met this other guy last night that he's really into. Like, doesn't-need-to-be-set-up-on-any-more-dates into. That could have been you, Luigi."

Matteo can feel himself blushing deeply, too sleep-addled to suppress the dopey smile that spreads across his face. "He doesn't want to be set up on any more dates, huh?" he says, making mischievous eye contact with David, who looks neither embarrassed nor sorry as he scrunches a pillow under his neck to look up at Matteo more easily.

"Yeah, that's what he said!" Carlos replies. "Dude, where the hell did you disappear to?"

He has no good answer for that, but he's saved by Hanna's interjection. "Look, Matteo, I'm sure you had your reasons, but after last night, you don't get to complain to me about being single, like, ever again."

David pulls on Matteo's hand in a get-back-down-here manner that firmly indicates it's time for the phone call to be over. Matteo, all too happy to oblige, traces a line over the arch of David's right eyebrow as he clears his throat. "Yeah, well, I don't think that'll be a problem," he says, and he cuts the call off in the middle of Hanna's reply to lean back down and pay due attention to David's hair and hands and lips.


End file.
